50 Nifty Finds #13: The Hand-Colored Lantern Slides of the Park Service

The lantern slide coloring department at the NPS Western Museum Laboratory, Berkeley, California, January 8, 1939 — note the "No talking" sign over the door. Photo by Schwenk, NPS History Collection.

Long before adult coloring books caught on in the 2010s, the National Park Service paid people to color. It doesn't look relaxing: the "NO TALKING" sign in the coloring room of the Western Museum Laboratory (WML) hints at a strict shop. But the work demanded concentration, a steady hand, good eyesight — even with magnifiers and light tables — and real artistic talent, so perhaps quiet was the point.

Magic lanterns

• 1600s: the first slide projector, the "magic lantern," appeared; the earliest slides were hand-painted glass.
• By 1850: slides were made from negatives — positive photographs on glass, projected on a wall or screen, and often hand colored.
• Before social media — and before family slide shows of the 1950s and 1960s — lantern slides showed faraway places, historical figures and events to clubs and gatherings. Firms like the Keystone View Company and photographers such as Henry G. Peabody sold educational slide programs, with national parks a favorite subject; amateurs, museums and universities made their own.

The coloring department at work, January 31, 1934 — from left, Mrs. Fleeson, Mrs. Cornell, Miss Taylor and Mrs. Sullivan. NPS History Collection.

The Park Service takes it up

• 1920s: the NPS began building its own slide collections for park lectures and promotion, relying less on commercial sets.
• A telling hire: in 1928 Rocky Mountain National Park hired Dr. Margaret Fuller Boos as a temporary ranger-naturalist — the first woman with a PhD hired by the NPS — even though Superintendent Roger W. Toll said he "should prefer a man for the work." What won him over wasn't her geology doctorate but her valuable lantern-slide collection, and his hope she'd make slides for the park.
• January 1934: Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds let WML build two darkrooms and hire unemployed photographers and artists. Chief Naturalist Ansel F. Hall reported that two darkroom operators could make 200 slides a day; coloring was slower, but 287 slides were colored in the first month. An assembly line vastly increased the slides available.
• Free to parks: WML supplied slides to parks and the Washington office. Its April 1938 catalog noted that most parks had "obtained quantities of colored slides." WML preferred to work from negatives; parks often sent color notes — if not, artists guessed the colors of places they'd never seen. WML also built carrying boxes and filing cabinets.

The end of hand coloring

Color film was coming. By October 1938 WML was making Kodaslide carrying cases, and its 1939 catalog reported that Kodaslides were "replacing the colored lantern slides in some parks," with parks sending film to WML for mounting. World War II ended New Deal programs like the WPA and largely stopped the slide program; after the war, Kodaslides and other color film replaced the colorists' art.

Before and after

The Tomlinson and Albright families with Superintendent Tomlinson at Mount Rainier National Park, about 1930 — as photographed, and as hand colored. NPS History Collection.

A gallery of hand-colored slides

Compare the artists' skill, colors, shading and detail — the best look like fine oil paintings, the sort of image that could fill a ranger talk or tempt people to visit.

Rangers Ike Livermore, Frank Kittredge, Guy Tobin and William Schultz, General Grant National Park (now part of Sequoia and Kings Canyon), 1930s.

Visitors at Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park.

An auto tour passing Sylvan Lake, Yellowstone National Park, 1920s. Photo by F.J. Haynes.

A stagecoach in Sequoia National Park, 1890s.

Sapphire Pool, Biscuit Basin, Yellowstone National Park, 1920s. Photo by Henry G. Peabody.

Half Dome from Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, 1915.

Zion Lodge, Zion National Park, 1930s. Photo by Wilkes.

Crater Lake, 1930s.

Hikers returning from Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park, 1930s.

Eagle Rock in the First Forest, Petrified Forest National Monument (now a national park), 1930s. Photo by Henry G. Peabody.

The Teton Range from Dead Man's Bar, Grand Teton National Park.

All slides and photographs: NPS History Collection. The black-and-white version above was made by digitally removing the slide's color.

Sources

Based on "50 Nifty Finds #13: The Artistry of Adult Coloring," NPS History Collection, National Park Service, drawing on the Assembled Historic Records of the NPS, Ralph H. Lewis's Museum Curatorship in the National Park Service, 1904–1982 (1993) and the Park Service Bulletin (1934); a work of the United States government in the public domain.